HGLRC Thor Pro parallel charging board

HGLRC Thor Pro charger board is battery parallel charging board with protection fuses and a discharge feature. Lets take a closer look at this board.

Closer look

Inside the box you’ll find the HGLRC Thor Pro charger board, XT60 and 6S balance lead connection to charger cables and instruction manual.

HGLRC Thor Pro charger board can charge 4 batteries in parallel with up to 40A of combined current.

Charger board has 15A automotive fuses for protecting the batteries from short circuit. These fuses have dedicated slots and are replaceable.

Charger board balance ports also have resettable thermal fuses for each individual cell. LED lights up when the thermal fuse takes the protection from overcurrent or short.

Compared to my old 2S-3S charging board this HGLRC Thor Pro charging board is a huge improvement in safety and featurewise.

Charging

Caution! You should only use the batteries with the same cell count and the battery voltages should not differ more than 0.1V per cell. Never leave the batteries unattended while they are charging or discharging!

HGLRC Thor charger board has 4 XT30 and XT60 ports for up to 4 batteries connected in parallel. When charging the batteries in parallel you should have in mind that total charging current is divided between the count of the batteries, meaning if you provide 10A of charging current to the board with 4 batteries, it will provide the 10A/4=2.5A for each of the battery. So if you want to charge multiple batteries in parallel, you should multiply the charging current by the number of the batteries. I usually charge from 1C to 2C current rating for each battery.

Discharging

This is very handy feature. There are often some lipo batteries left charged after the flying session. Lipo batteries don’t like to be left fully charged for a long period of time. They may puff, damage or degrade if left charged even for a few days. So it is recommended to discharge the li-po batteries to the storage voltage (3.7-3.8V) to keep them healthy.

The bottom part of the charger board is actually the discharger. It has XT30 and XT60 ports, battery voltage display, cell count LED indicators and the push button for the cell count selection.

Right after the battery is plugged in the 7 segment display will show the total battery voltage. And the discharge process will start automatically.

Each time the battery is plugged in you need to select the cell count of the battery by pressing the pushbutton on the side of the board. Otherwise it will discharge to the default 2S setting.

I wish it could detect the cell count or could remember the last setting rather than always use the 2S discharge setting.

I have tried to measure the discharge current with my power meter, but the current was too low for this meter to register.

So I’ve used the multimeter to measure the discharge current and it was about 45mA (0.045A) on 4S battery. It took about 7 hours to discharge the 4S 500mAh battery to the storage voltage. The discharge current is too small and the discharge process takes too much time.

The final voltage of the battery was 15.2V (or 3.8V per cell) after the process finished so the board discharged the battery to the correct voltage.

Final thoughts

HGLRC Thor Pro battery charger board is really well manufactured parallel charging board. It can safely charge up to 4 batteries simultaneously, connected in parallel. XT30 and XT60 ports fits all the 2S-6S batteries I have (except obviously the 1S ones). Multiple fuses makes this charger much safer to use. I feel much more confident in parallel charging with this HGLRC Thor Pro charger board.

The discharge feature is pretty much useless as it only discharges at very slow rate (only 0.045A) and it takes hours to discharge the battery to the storage voltage. The discharger still might be useful as battery voltage checker device. You may plug the discharged battery briefly in the discharger port and check the voltage.

You can always use the parallel charger board to parallel discharge your batteries. If your charger is capable of high discharge current (like ToolkitRC M6D) or you use a special discharger (like ISDT Smart Discharger) you can discharge up to 4 batteries simultaneously with this HGLRC Thor Pro charger board.

Available @

HGLRC: https://www.hglrc.com/products/hglrc-thor-lipo-battery-balance-charger-board-pro

Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002966733248.html

Disclaimer: This item was supplied by HGLRC for a fair and unbiased review. HGLRC never asked for a positive review and never influenced my opinion in any way. I’m trying my best to stay uninfluenced and give only my own opinion. All affiliate links if there are any help me purchase items for future reviews and tests.